


Un fior che nasce e muore: two studies in Hanahaki disease

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Series: Opera Over The Rainbow [3]
Category: Gilbert & Sullivan & Related Fandoms, La Traviata - Verdi/Piave, The Opera Companion - George W. Martin, Zenda Novels - Anthony Hope
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Homophobia, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Meta masquerading as fic, Multi, Other, opera - Freeform, tuberculosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 06:03:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11617458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: Opera has always presented a more overt demand for suspension of disbelief than most other dramatic forms, and never more so than with its ongoing fascination with plots based on hanahaki disease. The middle of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of this tidy, sentimental metaphor for tuberculosis – a gory, unpleasant and all too real ailment – and it has lingered ever since. Blood was replaced with roses, hacking coughs with immaculate arias, lingering deaths with graceful swoons.Chapter 1:Violetta, o, la traviata(Giuseppe Verdi and F. M. Piave)Chapter 2:Michael of Strelsau(Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan and Julian Sturgis)





	1. Violetta, o, la traviata

Opera has always presented a more overt demand for suspension of disbelief than most other dramatic forms, and never more so than with its ongoing fascination with plots based on hanahaki disease. The middle of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of this tidy, sentimental metaphor for tuberculosis – a gory, unpleasant and all too real ailment – and it has lingered ever since. Blood was replaced with roses, hacking coughs with immaculate arias, lingering deaths with graceful swoons. Even Giuseppe Verdi was not immune to the craze. _Violetta, o, la traviata_ , is something of a departure from his usual preoccupation with politics and the grand sweep of history. It is also one of his most popular operas.

  
**Violetta, o, la traviata**

MAIN CHARACTERS  
Violetta Valery (soprano)  
Flora Bervoix, her friend (mezzo-soprano)  
Alfredo Germont (tenor)  
Annina, Violetta's maid (soprano)  
Giorgio Germont, Alfredo's father (baritone)  
a doctor (bass)

Verdi seems to have moved some distance away from the conventional overture by this mid-point in his oeuvre. Instead, we get a prelude, with the wistful flower theme played on the violins.

**Act I**

The mood changes abruptly to jaunty woodwinds as the action opens at a party at Violetta's house. We discover her making small talk with some guests, who include a Marquis, a Baron – and Flora de Bervoix.

Alfredo enters, and Flora introduces him to Violetta as the man who came every day for news when she was sick. The Baron and the Marquis are not impressed, and Flora smooths things over by asking the newcomer to sing.

**brindisi** Alfredo obliges with a song about wine and youth. _'Libiamo ne' lieti calici che la belleza infiora.'_ (Let's drink from the cup in which beauty flowers!) Violetta answers him with the second verse. _'Godiam, fugace e rapido e il gaudio dell'amore e un fior che nasce e muore.'_ (Let's enjoy life, for the pleasures of love are fleeting, like a flower that lives and dies.) The mood is very self-consciously ebullient. One might almost say 'frenetic'.

The guests go off to supper. Violetta lingers behind and Alfredo waits for her.

**aria** Alfredo claims that he has loved Violetta for a year and more ( _Ah, si, da un anno._ ).

**duet** Violetta tells him that she appreciates the compliment, but warns him. He can't afford to fall in love with her, and she can't afford to fall in love at all. He will find it easy to forget her.

She gives him a flower and sends him packing. The other guests file out, somewhat boisterously, and Violetta is left alone.

**aria** This is Violetta's great set piece. It covers many thoughts and emotions. She can't believe that he loves her. She isn't entirely sure what love is. Is this it, this fluttering feeling in her heart? She sings of _Lui, che modesto e vigile all'egre soglie acese, e nuova febbre accese destandomi all'amor!_ (this man who waited at my sickbed and turned my illness into the burning fever of love). But it doesn't matter. Love can't be part of her life. _'Sempre libera'_ , she sings. She will always be free.

Then we hear Alfredo singing under the balcony. No, Violetta repeats, this is madness ( _follie_ ). She will remain free.

  
**Act II**

**_Scene i_ **

A house outside Paris, where Violetta and Alfredo have been living for the last three months.

**aria** Alfredo enters and sings of his happiness. Violetta has abandoned her whole life in Paris to be with him. He needs no further proof of her love for him.

Annina, the maid, comes in. She has been in Paris, selling Violetta's horses and carriages on her instructions. ( _Per alienar cavalli; cocchi e quanto ancor possiede._ ) Alfredo demands to know why. To cover their debts, Annina says.

**aria** _'O mio rimorso... O mio rossor! O infamia!'_ Alfredo expresses his feelings about this state of affairs (Remorse! Shame! Disgrace!) and rushes off to Paris himself.

Violetta comes in and is surprised to learn that Alfredo has gone to Paris. Annina gives her a letter from Flora.

Violetta reads it. _Dove sei?_ (Where are you?) Flora has written, presumably, since the letter has reached its destination, meaning it metaphorically rather than literally. _Parigi è morto senza te_. (Paris is dead without you.) She is inviting Violetta to a party. ' _Carissima Flora!_ ' Violetta sings, but dismisses it with a laugh.

The butler announces a visitor: it is Giorgio Germont, Alfredo's father.

Germont explains that his daughter's fiancée threatens to break off the engagement if Alfredo continues the liaison. They are, he says, _Pure siccome due angeli_ (as pure as two angels). He can neither expect his future daughter-in-law to associate herself with the scandal that Alfredo has brought upon the family, nor bear to see his daughter's heart broken.

_'E il core del tuo figlio?'_ she asks. What of your son's heart? Germont replies that he has no fears for Alfredo's health.

**aria** Violetta is in love for the first time in her life, and now she is being asked to give this up. ' _Giammai!_ ' she exclaims. (Never!)

**duet** Germont continues to press her. His daughter is being offered lasting happiness. Violetta's happiness cannot last, he tells her. At last, weeping, she gives in. She urges him to remain in the garden to comfort his son when he learns what has happened.

Germont agrees and leaves the room. Violetta writes two notes, one to Alfredo and one to Flora. Alfredo arrives before she can finish. She refuses to show him either note, but begs him to tell her he loves her. ' _Dimmi... è vero, tu m'ami?_ ' Then she bids him farewell.

He asks why she is leaving so suddenly; she tells him that he will understand very soon, and rushes away.

**aria** Alfredo reads Violetta's note. In it, she tells him that they are parted forever. ' _Lasciami morir_ ,' let me die, he sings despairingly.

His father attempts to comfort him, but Alfredo will have none of it. He snatches up the other letter – Flora's invitation to the party – reads it, and immediately dashes off to Paris in pursuit.

  
**_Scene ii_ **

Flora's party. She is talking with the Marquis and – in an ominous bit of foreshadowing – the doctor. They discuss whether Violetta and Alfredo will come to the party. The Marquis reports that they have broken their relationship and assumes that she will come with the Baron. Flora remarks that Violetta is welcome to bring the one, or the other, or nobody.

Much has been written about Verdi's mezzo-sopranos and contraltos (see, for example, _Finding a Voice for the Countess of Aremberg: the confidante in Verdi's operas_ , Gatling and Kerber, 1988) and their relationships with the soprano characters. Were they not too varied for such a term to be meaningless, one might call Flora de Bervoix 'typical'. Her quiet loyalty to Violetta – one that can easily be read as romantic – shames the inconstancy of the men. She has no solo arias, no flashy ornaments. And yet we are always aware of her presence. In the first and last acts she is off stage only during the big romantic scenes between Violetta and Alfredo; in the second, the moment where Violetta reads her letter can be one of the most touching of the whole opera.

Did Verdi and Piave intend Flora, like Violetta, to be shown succumbing to the disease? Her name suggests it, as do her mysterious final lines in this act (' _I fiori sono morti, e la festa è finita... per me, non è mai iniziata._ ' - 'The flowers are dead, and the party is over... for me, it never began.'). Directors who choose this interpretation often give her daisies to cough up, in a self-conscious nod to Marguerite, the Violetta analogue in Dumas' original _La Dame aux Camélias_.

**chorus** But for the moment, at least, the mood is light-hearted. Some of Flora's guests, disguised as gypsies and matadors, entertain the rest of the party with a programme of fortune telling, dancing, and a performance on their tambourines.

Alfredo appears – alone. Flora installs him at a card table. Violetta then arrives with the Baron.

The Baron and Alfredo irritate each other to the point where Violetta implores heaven to help her. Heaven is not forthcoming. Instead, Alfredo demands that she leave with him. She tells him that she can't; she's made a promise. This much is, of course, true. However, since she can't tell to whom she's made that promise, it doesn't help much, and he assumes she means the Baron.

**finale** Alfredo calls everybody into the room and denounces Violetta with an excruciatingly detailed account of their liaison. He throws his gambling winnings at her feet.

It is at this moment that Violetta's disease first appears in its physical manifestation. It poses some challenges for the party in charge of special effects, who must ensure a convincing spectacle without impairing the singer's respiratory system. The flowers are described variously as ' _rossi e bianchi_ ' (red and white), as in Dumas' original camellias, and as ' _viole_ ' (purple), as befitting Violetta. Directors have chosen props according to their whim.

But she manages to hide this from Alfredo and all the guests. Only Flora notices. The act comes to a close with the rest of the company talking variously of Alfredo's terrible behaviour, honour and duels, and sacrifice.

  
**Act III**

Two months later. Violetta's bedroom; she is in bed. The disease has reached its final stages.

A regrettable myth has grown up around the première. It is true that Verdi called it a 'fiasco'; and recent writers have blamed this on the first Violetta, Fanny Salvini Donatelli, whom they have deemed too plump to play this victim of a wasting disease convincingly. In actual fact, a cursory study of contemporary accounts will show that the première was not the disaster it's painted these days, and that Salvini Donatelli was the most consistently applauded of the three principals.

The prelude to this final act harks back to the first one. It is usually played with the curtain up. A recent production had a gauze down and a time-lapse film of a growing violet. Critical opinion was divided as to whether this was understated and effective, or tacky as hell.

The doctor tells Violetta that she is improving, but admits to Flora that he's lying. Violetta has perhaps a few hours left to live.

Violetta rereads a letter from Germont. He writes that Alfredo has wounded the Baron in a duel and therefore forced to leave the country. Germont has explained Violetta's sacrifice to him (though not to the sister or her fiancée) and Alfredo will return to implore her pardon.

'And yet,' Violetta observes drily, 'I'm still dying.' Remorse isn't the same thing as love, and it can't save her.

**aria** Violetta laments the cruel irony of her fate ( _O destino crudel!_ ) She does not care for love – in her profession, it was an inconvenience at best, and now it's killing her – but she wants to live. In rather gruesome detail she imagines the plants twining around her heart and lungs, and describes how she would extract the unwelcome growth if only it were possible. But there's no help for it. Her destiny is to love and die. ' _Tutto fini._ ' (Everything is over.)

Alfredo arrives, accompanied by his father.

**duet** Alfredo suggests that he and Violetta leave Paris (' _Parigi, o cara..._ '). Hope returns: perhaps he really does love her; perhaps she will recover. She suggests that they go to church to give thanks for his safe return, but she hasn't the strength to put on her coat.

Flora runs to get the doctor.

**trio** Violetta says that she is going to die and gives Alfredo a portrait of herself. He and his father express remorse and despair. ' _No,_ ' Alfredo exclaims, ' _non morrai!_ ' (Don't die!)

There is a discreet pause while Violetta coughs up another flower. 'See,' she says, 'how beautiful it is, how perfect every petal, and yet it's killing me.'

**quintet** Returning to the portrait, Violetta begs Alfredo to give it to the person he will eventually marry. The others quietly express their grief.

Suddenly, Violetta exclaims, ' _È strano... in me rinasce m'agita insolito vigor! Ah! ma io ritorno a viver!_ ' (It's strange... my old strength is reborn in me! Life is returning to me!) But it's only another flower. She dies.


	2. Michael of Strelsau

Sullivan – or, rather, Gilbert – had flirted with the hanahaki disease device in _The Yeomen of the Guard_ , though most baritones played Jack Point's climactic petal-strewn collapse for laughs, until Martyn Green opted for a more tragedic slant in the 1950s. Now, collaborating once more with Julian Sturgis in the attempt to surpass _Ivanhoe_ and make his last opera his grandest and greatest, he turned to a recent literary hit. _Michael of Strelsau_ , however, comes from the opposite direction from _The Prisoner of Zenda_. The book's villain is the opera's anti-hero: it makes a significant difference, far beyond the title.

In its playful frivolity _Michael of Strelsau_ looks to Vienna and the emerging operetta form; the double-Rudolf device harks back to the chaos of the Savoy operas; but the tragic ending may at last have satisfied Sullivan's desire to be taken seriously. The story of a playboy prince unfit for the throne might have been a little close to the bone; but Sullivan's knighthood was already safe, and it is just about possible for Flavia's last aria to be sung with a straight face.

  
**Michael of Strelsau**

MAIN CHARACTERS  
Michael, Duke of Strelsau (baritone)  
Rudolf Rassendyll/King Rudolf V (tenor)  
Colonel Sapt, a supporter of Rudolf V (bass)  
Rupert Hentzau (tenor)  
John Detchard (baritone)  
Erich von Lauengram (bass)  
Princess Flavia, cousin of Michael and Rudolf V (soprano)  
Helga von Strofzin, lady-in-waiting to Pricess Flavia (mezzo-soprano)  
Antoinette de Mauban, a Frenchwoman in love with Michael (contralto)  
Stephen, a citizen of Strelsau (baritone)

  
**Overture**

As with many of Sullivan's overtures, this was probably compiled by an assistant shortly before the première. It combines the fanfare from the coronation scene, Michael's wistful love theme, the tune from Rudolf's jaunty air in Act III (played on the bassoons), the 'card game' quartet, and Flavia's 'duty' theme, before returning to the fanfare.

**Act I**

**_Scene i_ **

A forty-eight bar prelude (this, by contrast, was almost certainly Sullivan's own work) sets the themes that will be associated respectively with love (the cellos) and duty (French horns) against each other, as the curtain rises on a crowded street in the old part of Strelsau. In the background we see the towers of the cathedral.

**chorus and solo** The townspeople sing a rather desultory chorus expressing their relief that the date of King Rudolf V's coronation has at last been named. Stephen repeatedly breaks in to make the case for Rudolf's half-brother Michael making a far better candidate for the throne, but the citizens, fearing retribution for treasonable talk, hush him.

Then Duke Michael enters, to an ironic flourish on the trumpets. Immediately the chorus' volume, enthusiasm and numbers are doubled.

Rudolf crosses the stage, accompanied by a march in which the dominant notes are a rather daring trombone and piccolo, giving the crowd and the audience ample opportunity to observe him. He does not sing or speak a word. He continues on his progress, and the crowd trickles offstage after him.

Michael's henchman Rupert Hentzau enters and reports that the mood among the populace is on a knife-edge. 'The new town hails the king, my lord, but the old town's all for you.'

**duet** In a duet with Rupert ('Hark! Now hark!'), Michael expounds his plan. He has arranged for a bottle of drugged wine to be served to the King on the night before the coronation. The King will not fail to drink it; and therefore he will fail to appear.

'But you know you'd sleep much sounder, if he slept sounder still,' Rupert tells him. Michael retorts that he is not in the business of murder. Rupert reluctantly acquiesces, and leaves the stage.

**air** Alone, Michael confesses that the throne means nothing to him without the love of the Princess Flavia. 'See, how the roses grow...' he sings, ominously. 'I have heard that love gives life, but not, I think, for me'. Once again, the love theme soars up through the higher range of the cellos, but is drowned out by the duty theme on the horns. 'Yet give me time!' he concludes. 'I shall save Ruritania, though it be too late for me!'

  
**Act II**

**_Scene i, Princess Flavia's rooms_ **

By all accounts, the original set was sumptuous. These days, Princess Flavia's rooms are usually indicated with an armchair and a standard lamp in front of the curtain, while frantic scene-shifting takes place behind.

**air** Flavia fears that she must marry for the good of the country (we hear the duty theme again, though for Flavia it's played on the cor anglais). She is not, she explains to Helga, overly enamoured of either choice. Rudolf is impossible; Michael, unthinkable.

She concludes, 'Forgive me, dear; it isn't fair to bore you so.'

**duet** Helga protests that she would listen to Flavia's complaints as a friend even if she weren't duty bound to do so as her lady-in-waiting. Flavia gives thanks for a loyal companion.

A page arrives and informs the princess that her carriage is waiting to take her to the cathedral for the coronation of Rudolf V of Ruritania.

  
**_Scene ii, the cathedral_ **

A lengthy march – originally composed to fill time while the aforementioned sumptuous set was changed – is sometimes cut. It leads into a fanfare as the curtain rises on the interior of the cathedral.

**chorus and solos** The congregation sings 'All hail the King!' The King, has not, however, shown yet, and various soloists swap remarks on some of the other dignitaries present. Antoinette de Mauban has a somewhat irrelevant aside about her feelings for Duke Michael.

**duet** Michael and Flavia greet each other with icy politeness, accompanied by glassy pizzicato from the upper strings. But the cellos tell a different story, and Michael confesses that even her coldness towards him cannot damp his ardour.

**chorus** At first the mood is one of uncomplicated patriotism, but the King fails to appear, and the theme becomes more impatient with every repetition. Even the trumpet seems to be expressing some doubts; it wanders away from the official line, and eventually yields to an oboe solo.

Michael exults in the success of his plan. 'Who do they wait for? No man! No king!' This line goes rather high for a baritone. It has been known for some Michaels to crack on the top G; they inevitably claim that this is to add verisimilitude, etc.

The chorus reprises, 'Where is the King? Where is the King?' The mood has turned ugly.

At last, a trumpet fanfare announces the King, the brass swells to drown out the murmuring of the chorus, and the man himself appears.

'This is not the king!' Michael exclaims – _sotto voce_. But the man, whoever he is, is giving a passable impression, and the crowd is somewhat mollified.

In a finale racked with tension, Michael wonders how his plan could go so far awry, Flavia despairs that Rudolf is apparently beginning his reign as he means to go on, and Rupert offers to put a bullet through the man there and then.

  
**Act III**

**_Scene i, Michael's quarters, a few days later_ **

**quartet** (the 'card game' quartet) Michael has gathered his henchmen together to discuss how to retrieve their scheme. Lauengram and Detchard have the King in their custody: that's a card in their hand. The man on the throne must therefore be an impostor: that's a card in their hand, too. And yet none of them can see the way to playing their aces and winning the trick.

Lauengram and Detchard discuss the merits of assassinating the real King while they have him and then effecting a coup. Michael tells them that the Ruritanian people won't stand for it.

Rupert promises Michael that he will take care of the impostor, whoever he is, and leaves with Detchard.

**air** 'But how long have I?' Michael turns aside and covers his mouth with a handkerchief, but cannot disguise the flowers that he has coughed up.

**duet** 'Sir, you are not well,' sings the solicitous Lauengram, and offers to fetch a doctor. Michael fears that the cure will be worse than the disease, but allows himself to be led off.

We never hear any more of this 'cure', and we can assume either that there's nothing the doctor can do, or that Michael refuses treatment.

  
**_Scene ii, an apartment in the royal palace_ **

**air** The King is alone. But – as he explains in the first line that he sings – he is not the King. He is Rudolf Rassendyll, an Englishman of leisure, visiting Ruritania out of sheer curiosity. Why is he curious? He tells the story in a deliciously indiscreet air, punctuating it with the refrain, 'Well – for my great-grandmama's sake, perhaps I'd better not tell!'

But he tells, and so may we. He is the cadet of a good, but not noble, house, and the great-grandmother in question was linked in rumour with Rudolf ('the third of that name') of Ruritania. The Rassendylls have tended towards a resemblance towards the royal house of Ruritania ever since.

'So much for the past,' he admits, 'but what strange power brings me here?' An unwise impulse led him across the border, where he fell in with the King himself and discovered that in this case the family resemblance made them practically identical – and what was initially an amusing coincidence became a godsend when the real King was discovered insensible on the morning of his coronation. Rudolf concludes, 'I never dreamed to meet my cousin, still less to wear his crown!'

Some purist Savoyards, following the precedent of Julia Jellicoe in _The Grand Duke_ , insist on the tenor's assuming a thick German accent when in the role of the Englishman Rassendyll. One cannot help feeling that there are less awkward ways of distinguishing between the two characters.

To ponderous trombones, a servant announces Colonel Sapt, who, we discover, is one of the King's most loyal companions and prime mover in the plot to substitute one Rudolf for the other.

**duet** Colonel Sapt encourages Rudolf to pay suit to Princess Flavia in the interests of maintaining the illusion. The problem, Rudolf explains, is not that she is unattractive – quite the reverse. In fact, he's seriously worried that he's going to fall for her. 'A bachelor abroad,' he concludes, 'had best have a care!' Sapt is unconvinced but agrees not to press the matter.

He leaves, and Rupert Hentzau appears at the window.

**duet** 'Who might you be?' 'I, sir? There's no mystery to my name...' Rupert tells Rudolf that there's no point pretending to be the King. However, since he's here... Rudolf promptly forgets his own good advice. With a moody accompaniment of tremolo strings and dark woodwinds under the fragile banter of the two tenors, this number is a masterpiece of barely suppressed sex and violence. Rudolf is seduced easily enough, but when Rupert draws a dagger to dispatch him, he overpowers and disarms him.

Rupert gets out the same way that he came in, with a light-hearted cry of 'Farewell, play-actor!'

  
**Act III**

**_The palace at Strelsau_ **

Due to the limitations of the operatic form, and the impossibility of having two Rudolfs in the same place, Sturgis was forced to have the action of one of the most dramatic sections of the novel happening off stage. However, it makes for a stirring tenor solo.

**air** Rudolf recounts the past few days' activity to Flavia. Together with Colonel Sapt and a small group of armed men, he infiltrated the castle at Zenda and released the King, who is now on his way back into Strelsau.

**duet** Rudolf begs the princess' pardon for having deceived her, and assures her that it wasn't all for show. He lived a lie. He tried not to speak of love, but when he did, he spoke the truth. Gradually, Flavia talks herself into believing it, in one of the most meltingly lyrical melodies that Sullivan ever wrote. But Rudolf has to leave Ruritania, and fast. He takes his leave, and the tenor dashes off for a quick change.

Flavia's solo, which follows, is surely one of the loveliest ways to fill five minutes and give him a chance to change his jacket and ruffle his hair in the opposite direction.

**air** 'Farewell, freedom! Farewell, love!' Flavia has been evading her duties. This is the end of the impossible dream in which she has been allowing herself to exist. Here at last the 'duty' theme is allowed to develop fully.

As Flavia sinks, weeping, into a chair, Michael enters, with Antoinette de Mauban. Flavia is alarmed and summons Helga.

Michael explains to the princess that he is about to be exposed as a traitor. Only the King's intervention could save him, and he doesn't care to ask for it. He's about to die anyway, and it doesn't matter now.

'You're dying?' Flavia repeats. Yes, he says; knowing that his love for her distresses her, he had avoided speaking of it, but it's obvious now. The cause of his death is his love.

**air** The famous 'Red rose of Ruritania.' At long last, Michael gives vent to his true feelings. 'The flowers fall,' he sings, 'their petals thicker every day'. The flowers fall and he grows weaker. He is doomed and so, he fears, is Ruritania.

**trio** Flavia is touched, but, 'I cannot love you,' she sings; 'and pity cannot save you.' Antoinette de Mauban tells Michael that she has been in love with him all along, but her love cannot save him, either. The love theme, repeated here in the minor, confirms it. Michael asks Flavia to use her influence to set the country on a stable course. He has tried but failed. 'Ah, Ruritania, I know not whether I curse or bless thee!' He dies supported between the two of them.

Rudolf enters, followed by a chorus of attendants. A skilled make-up artist will have performed a transformation during the preceding action, turning the hale and hearty impostor into the sickly king.

**air, duet and finale** Flavia, resigned, sings that order is restored to Ruritania and that duty must come before love. Rudolf, apparently inspired by her rather unenthusiastic words, immediately proposes to her and vows to reform. The chorus echo Flavia's theme and the curtain falls.

**Author's Note:**

>  _La traviata_ is, of course, a real opera. Alfredo is rather less tiresome in the real thing, and you have to squint harder to see Violetta/Flora. However, the real-world _Opera Companion_ does indeed give Germont's daughter's 'fiancée' that extra E, so maybe George Martin knows something I don't. The detail about Fanny Salvini Donatelli is true: the fat-shaming was posthumous. _Finding a voice for the Countess of Aremberg_ is not real; but I do find it interesting that, of all the cast of _Don Carlo_ , the only character that the queen can trust implicitly is the one who doesn't sing a note.
> 
>  _Michael of Strelsau_ is not a real opera, sadly. However, the detail about Martyn Greene making Jack Point a more tragic character in _The Yeomen of the Guard_ is factual. 
> 
> I'm indebted to [_The Ruritanian Resistance_](http://silverwhistle.co.uk/ruritania/index.html) for the headcanon about Michael suffering from tuberculosis. And the whole thing probably owes a lot to Susan Sontag's _Illness as Metaphor_ , though it's a very long time since I've read it.


End file.
